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Cherwell Service Management vs JIRA Service Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cherwell Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JIRA Service Management
Ranking in Help Desk Software
2nd
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Service Management (ITSM) category, the mindshare of Cherwell Service Management is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JIRA Service Management is 7.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Service Management (ITSM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Cherwell Service Management1.7%
Other91.0%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
Sohaib Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Service Delivery at quixel
Comprehensive workflows and data views have supported complex teams but still need cost improvements
JIRA Service Management is costly. The pricing structure needs improvement. When I add some plugins, I have to pay the cost for every user whether they are using it or not. For smaller companies, the detailed workflow editing and the kind of details that JIRA Service Management provides would be complex. For startups and smaller companies, JIRA Service Management would be complex. The cloud offering is easier because I don't have to manage the infrastructure. There are two templates of the project: company-managed and team-managed. Team-managed is a newer feature, which is good for startup-kind companies where they don't need control over data from multiple projects displaying in one dashboard. For startups, JIRA Service Management is somewhat complex with its schemes and everything. Capacity management should be improved in terms of additional features in the next release of JIRA Service Management.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"Jira gets the basics right in terms of the product backlog and a scrum board teams can use to manage sprint backlogs."
"Reporting and easy export to Excel spreadsheets."
"The tool is scalable."
"I'm mainly working in the ITSM module of JIRA Service Management, and the integration between the system incident and how you can link all the records to the change makes it quite powerful."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility of defining your own workflows and automation around the workflows, and the integration with the gate or any repository."
"The most valuable features of JIRA Service Management are the service level agreement or management, and the ticketing system. Additionally, there are frequent updates that provide improvements."
"Transparency of the system helps both internal and external persons involved."
"I like the history, the dimensioning, and how I can configure a space based on my preferences or the project circumstances."
 

Cons

"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"The way it handles subtasks can be improved. We would really like the ability to have different types of subtasks. If we have a user story for a feature, we would like to have a subtask for documentation, a subtask for requirements, a subtask for development, and a subtask for testing. Right now, we just make four subtasks, but there is no way to specify their type, so we have to add a custom field to specify what type of work is this. It just means you've got to look at more data. For logging time or time tracking, we would like to have something using which we can define the work type we're doing. We would like to log whether we're working on a bug, a new development, scope change, or rework. We've got a user story for which we do the dev, and then we have to do more dev. It is the same story, but some of it could have been a scope change, and some of it could be a rework because we either screwed up the first time or missed something obvious. Currently, we have to have a custom field and track that separately. It would be nice to have some kind of work type for logging time."
"The licensing model could be improved. There needs to be a different licensing model for large numbers of employees, as it remains one of the main barriers to using JIRA Service Management across our entire company."
"We have tried exporting some of the test cases into Jira from Excel. The interface for that isn't very user-friendly."
"The performance in cloud service management could be improved."
"Include a split configuration in a layer part to allow cloud services to have almost full admin rights in SaaS."
"We have a lot of add-ons, however, instead of the add-ons, for example, cloning could be better."
"Integration possibilities with other products that are not Atlassian would be helpful. Support should also provide separate installation guides for each product even though they are easy to install."
"The pricing could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"The price of JIRA Service Management could be reduced."
"JIRA Service Management's pricing is pretty decent compared to competitors. I rate the pricing an eight to nine on a scale of one to ten."
"We have paid $20,000 recently for a one-year license for our on-prem server."
"Costs are about $50 per user per year. JIRA is sold in user tiers of 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 2000, 10,000, and unlimited users. It is bad when you have 51 users then the price is based on that 100 user tier. Users at 100 will be the most cost effective."
"JSM's pricing is one of the best, starting at around $10 per user, per month, with volume discounts available."
"It's not really expensive, especially when you compare to ServiceNow or other solutions, and it's not expensive to maintain."
"Licensing can become quite expensive."
"I would suggest to always buy licenses through an Atlassian partner, so you can also rely on their expertise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise33
 

Also Known As

No data available
JIRA Service Desk, Atlassian Jira Service Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
mgm technology partners, Telestream, Build.com, Zend Technologies, OfficeDrop, PGS Software, American Diabetes Association, NEPTUNE Canada
Find out what your peers are saying about Cherwell Service Management vs. JIRA Service Management and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,448 professionals have used our research since 2012.